


and they could never tear us apart

by slytherincosette



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, i tagged for major character death because its the apocalypse babey!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 06:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherincosette/pseuds/slytherincosette
Summary: "And then,and then, just as the entire world has quite literally crumbled down around him, Ben sees Five. He appears, sudden and so unexpected, by what used to be the gates of their house. Five’s shoutinghisname, shouting forBen, and Ben has just lost his entire family but Five ishere.Ben is hit with the sudden, startling revelation thatoh. This is where Five went."-Five isn't the last person on earth. He's just the last person alive.





	and they could never tear us apart

**Author's Note:**

> so i dumped my Five feels in with some Ben feels and this short lil thing happened. takes place right after the FIRST apocalypse that they don't stop. five has just jumped ahead in time. ben has just watched his family die in front of him. fun!!

Ben watches all of his siblings die, their childhood home crushing them into the rubble. He watches because he can’t do anything else. The world ends a few minutes later, but Ben doesn’t really care. His world ended the second Klaus’ heart stopped beating for the last time. He wasn’t even able to hold his brother’s hand as he died.

Minutes pass, then hours. Ben sits and watches as Klaus’ body cools.

And then, _and then_ , just as the entire world has quite literally crumbled down around him, Ben sees Five. He appears, sudden and so unexpected, by what used to be the gates of their house. Five’s shouting _his_ name, shouting for _Ben_ , and Ben has just lost his entire family but Five is _here_.

Ben is hit with the sudden, startling revelation that _oh_. This is where Five went.

In Five’s timeline, he is thirteen. He has just run rather obnoxiously out of the house after stabbing a knife into the wood of the table and interrupting Ben’s quiet reading time. Ben remembers the morning Five disappeared, they all do, but Ben remembers being _annoyed_ that his melodramatic brother had to cause such a scene when their Dad clearly had a point. 

For Ben, it has been seventeen years. Seventeen years of guilt for rolling his eyes as Five walked out the door, only for him to never return. Seventeen years of wondering where he went, why he _left_ , if he was okay. Of talking Klaus through panic attack after panic attack because he saw a dead little kid and _fuck, Ben, what if the next one is Five? _Ben remembers, distantly, calling out for Five when he died.__

__It has been seventeen years. For Five, it has been approximately fifteen minutes._ _

He calls out, but Five can’t hear him. Of course Five can’t hear him. He’s dead, just like the rest of them, and god _fucking_ damnit, why aren’t they here? Why haven’t they appeared, stuck like he is? Like he has been, since the day his body ripped itself apart? 

And if they won’t appear, if his siblings crossed over the fucking rainbow bridge and ended up on the other side, why is Ben still here?

Five eventually wanders over, looking beyond lost and so young it makes Ben’s still heart ache. He makes the rounds, stops at each of the bodies. Looks on in horror at the faces he’s never seen but somehow _knows_. Five stops short at the sight of Klaus, face down on a pile of bricks, and Ben sees the exact moment Five notices that goddamn umbrella tattoo, gets the confirmation that these people, these corpses, are his family.

Ben watches, completely helpless, as his thirteen year old brother drops to the ground like a sack of rocks. Five sits, and stares, and he doesn’t move for a very long time.

They are together again, _finally_ , but they are so impossibly alone.

“Guess we’d better watch him, huh?”

Ben jumps to his feet because he knows that voice. He knows it better than he knows his own, but it can’t be, it’s not, he can’t let himself hope–

Klaus stumbles over some rubble, makes his way to Ben’s side. Kicks at his own corpse’s leg and laughs as his foot passes right through. “I mean, you know, we can’t do much, but the least we can do is follow the kid around and try our best to make sure he doesn’t die, right? We can’t just leave him alone.”

“Klaus,” Ben says. And then he’s laughing, a hysterical sound, and holy shit, he can _hug his brother._ So he does. He holds on tight and doesn’t let go until little Number Five starts to cry, these big heaving sobs that wrack his tiny body. A sadness, an utter hopelessness that goes beyond his years. 

“Aw, shit,” Klaus says, “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees, his voice hoarse.

“We can’t leave him alone,” Klaus repeats.

And they don’t. They don’t move on into whatever’s next because they have a job to do. They watch over their brother, because they just got him back. They follow him through the barren wasteland of the earth, watch him scavenge for food and sleep huddled under awnings, shivering through winters and sweating through the heat of summer. They watch over him when he gets sick, when there’s no food to be found. They see him grow up the way they never got to, and they watch him lug that fucking mannequin around the whole entire way.

They make sure he’s never alone. Not really.

(Sometimes, Five swears he can hear Klaus laughing. It’s gotta be the wind, gotta be his mind going. Dolores tells him she’s seen two men following them, one hunched over in a black hoodie, the other in ridiculous leather pants and a fur coat. Five thinks that maybe _she’s_ the one losing her mind, after all. He shakes his head at her, and he carries on. There's nothing else he can do.)

____

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked it, please leave a kudos or a comment because i need constant validation!! thanks for reading, friends xx


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